Hyphen Heaven

The Only Rule In Choosing A Name Is That There Are No Rules

February 14, 1993|By Janice L. Kaplan, (copyright) 1993 New York Times News Service.

When Elise Goldstein and Baruch Browns of Toronto were married six years ago, they discussed which name they would pass on to their offspring.

"We absolutely wanted a family name," said Goldstein, a rabbi. But, she added, they wanted a creative alternative to passing on only the father's surname.

The solution? They took the gold from Goldstein, the brown from Browns, mixed them together and created Sienna, the legal last name of their children, Noam, 3, and Carmi, 20 months. As Browns, a calligrapher and school administrator, put it, "Ocher, or those other muddy yellow colors, didn't seem like nice names."

For many parents, choosing a child's last name is a matter of personal decision, a chance to be creative, even an opportunity to make a statement. But sometimes, say experts and the children involved, the parents' choices, if not clearly explained, can result in confusion and identity problems.

A generation ago, a child was routinely given the father's surname. That is still the most common approach. But as more women keep their names after marriage, newborns' last names are hyphenated, combined or even reinvented.

Even before having children, one Arlington, Va., couple, Melanie Graves and Michael Versace, chose a new family name-Rios. It had meaning to them because it was his mother's maiden name and it also is Spanish for "rivers."

But do the children understand? Joanne Hurt, program director of a daycare center in Chevy Chase, Md., told of recently overhearing a remark by 8-year-old Emily Wright Mecklenburg, the daughter of Kris Wright and Peter Mecklenburg. She explained to a friend, "My name is Emily Wright, but we pronounce it Mecklenburg."

How will the next generation cope with these hybrid names? How will they fit their names on SAT forms? Will the pediatrician's office or school lose their records? (Many schools print cross-referenced lists of parents' names as supplements to student directories.)

Neil Bernstein, a child psychologist who practices in Virginia and Washington, said, "Kids have to make sense of who they are." To a child, Bernstein added, "a hyphenated name makes sense." But he has counseled children who are embarrassed by their cumbersome names, children who "can't fit their names on a page, or can't spell their names."

"The important thing," he said, "is that a child develop an appropriate and healthy identity."

Salvatore Didato, a psychologist in Scarsdale, N.Y., who works with families and children, said, "Anything that deviates from what is customary is going to raise questions (within) the peer group. This could be an opportunity for attack, teasing or ridicule."

He urged parents to take the time to explain the origin of the surname to their child, more than once.

For those who think the Goldstein/Browns/Sienna household is hard to keep track of, consider the Zuckerman/Chitwood/Martin family of Pawtucket, R.I.

In 1988, Faye Zuckerman exchanged wedding vows with a fellow journalist. Although her husband's legal name is J. Martin Chitwood, he is known both professionally to the readers of his column in the Providence Journal and commonly to friends and colleagues by the pen name John Martin.

In January 1991, he and Zuckerman had a son whom they named Seth Moses Chitwood. Seth's name "is the result of choices and career paths his mom and dad have taken," Martin said. "He'll have plenty of friends who have similar stories."

In the Berney family of Silver Spring, Md., the mother, the father and the children all have the same last name. But they came by it in a rather unorthodox manner.

When Michael Gottlieb, who designs training sessions for the federal court system, and Elizabeth Berney, a consultant on workers' morale and productivity, married in the spring of 1982, they decided they needed to agree on a family name.

"That went hand-in-hand with creating a couple," he said. Among the solutions they considered were combining their names, hyphenating the two names or selecting a completely new name. One name he considered for his family was Gandhi, though she was quick to point out that Gandhi was never on her short list.

He had heard of a West Virginia couple who rotated their names every five years, first using her birth name, then his. "This suggested to me that people were solving this problem in a number of different ways and that there was no right solution," he said.

What worked was for Gottlieb to change his last name legally to his wife's name-Berney-the name they passed on to Sara, 4, and Max, 6 months. Berney describes his decision as being a little like "biting your lip and jumping into water you know is going to be cold."

For Susan Van Horn and Chris Hershey of Los Angeles, choosing a surname for their child was easy compared with the complicated adoption process they went through beforehand. Van Horn, a commercial photographer and hypnotherapist, and Hershey, owner of a design and marketing concern, were the first lesbians in Los Angeles County to be granted joint custody of a child.

Their son, now 3, was given both women's last names as well as first and middle names of his own.

"When I was born," Van Horn said, "I wasn't given a middle name. I guess my parents figured that I'd grow up, get married and never use it."

Wayne Cook, archives specialist with the National Archives in Washington, said different cultures have always had all kinds of naming patterns. The new pattern is none at all, he added.

He views composite names as a boon. From a genealogical point of view, variations like hyphenated names are "a godsend," Cook said, adding, "The more information you have, and the longer the names, the better your chances are of getting some clues of tracking something down."